Peter Thiel Leaving Meta Board To Focus On Pro-Trump Politics
"Billionaire Peter Thiel—one of Facebook’s earliest investors—plans to leave Meta’s board of directors, the company announced Monday, and plans to focus on influencing November’s midterm elections in favor of Trump-aligned candidates, according to an unnamed source cited by the New York Times.
Thiel was one of Facebook’s first large investors, investing $500,000 in the company in 2004. In 2016, Thiel voiced enthusiastic but qualified support for Trump, describing Trump’s comments about women as “clearly offensive and inappropriate,” but suggesting that Trump would help make the U.S. more prosperous by reducing deficits and taking the U.S. out of “undeclared wars.”
In 2021, Thiel donated $10 million to groups backing the campaigns of Trump-supported Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters and Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance, an Ohio Senate candidate who has fought to rebrand himself as pro-Trump despite previous harshly critical comments.
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Club for Growth endorses Blake Masters in Arizona Senate race
The endorsement puts even more financial might behind Masters’s campaign. He already has the support of billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who has pledged millions of dollars to a super PAC backing Masters’s Senate bid.
“Masters will be a champion for economic freedom in the Senate and Club for Growth PAC looks forward to helping him win the primary and then the general this November,” Club for Growth PAC President David McIntosh said in a statement.
Masters is one of several Republicans running in a crowded primary field to take on Kelly in November. Other top candidates for the nomination include Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, businessman Jim Lamon and retired Air Force Major General Mick McGuire.
Republicans see Kelly’s seat as one of their best pickup opportunities this year. The GOP needs to flip just one seat in the Senate to recapture control of the upper chamber, and Arizona has emerged as a key battleground where Democrats only recently began racking up wins. . ."
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> In January, Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. co-hosted two fundraisers for Harriet Hageman, a Republican primary challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who on Friday was censured by the Republican National Committee for serving on a House committee investigating the January 6 riot.
> Thiel also invested in Rumble, a video sharing platform that bills itself as “immune to cancel culture.”
> Thiel’s company Founders Fund contributed more than $10 million to Boldend, a “cyber warfare” startup that developed tools for hacking Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp, a source familiar with the company told Forbes. . .
In his 2022 book Our Journey Together, Trump decried Zuckerburg’s “censorship” and campaign contributions and claimed that Zuckerberg visited the White House to curry favor with him.
> Truth Social, an alternative social media platform from Trump Media and Technology Group, is scheduled to launch February 21."
Peter Thiel Is Finally Free to Go All-In on Far-Right Politics
The billionaire investor is giving up his long-held Facebook board seat to make a play for the Trumpist restoration.
"For years, even as Facebook came under increasing scrutiny from Washington politicians and regulators, the controversial billionaire Peter Thiel kept his seat on the company's board, and, with it, his position as one of Silicon Valley’s most important power brokers. Now, Thiel is finally giving up that seat — one that he has held since 2005 — a move that will likely spare Meta Platforms Inc. from added political headaches. It will also allow Thiel to do what he has long signaled was a desire: to go all-in on far-right politics.
The investor and co-founder of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. has long seemed ambivalent about Facebook, a company where he was the first outside investor and a mentor to Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. . ."
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